Elephant Chess Cup 8 - Discussion

[South Newlandia]

Overview:
This is the signup thread for the eighth Elephant Chess Cup. Once again, teams of 4 will compete against each other in rapid (15 minutes + 5 seconds per move) chess for the title. If you’re new and unfamiliar with how this would work, you can check out the Everything Thread for the seventh ECC, won by The Kytler Peninsulae, or send me a telegram!

Host bidding:
Like in the last few editions, host bidding will once again be open to the nations of the multiverse. There are no rules to restrict nations from bidding, and bidders are quite free in how exactly they intend to host the event, ICly and OOCly, and are encouraged to include all the important information in their host bid. Be aware, however, that this can be a relatively complicated event; if you haven't hosted an event on NSS before, this might not be the ideal starting point. You can view the two most recent successful host bids (excluding those by South Newlandia), by Bollonich and Poafmersia respectively, here and here.
Host bids will be put to vote for all signed up users that have previously roleplayed in ECC6 or 7. I also reserve the right to reject host bids should they not meet the standards expected; which are to explain how they plan to run the event ICly and OOCly. The deadline for host bids to be submitted is December 17th, 22:00 UTC. Should no bids be submitted, or all bids be rejected during the vote, the tournament will take place in South Newlandia instead.

Puppet rules
You may sign up a secondary nation if you have previously roleplayed in an Elephant Chess Cup. The puppet arrangement will have to be declared by both the "master" and the "puppet". The ultimate inclusion of puppets is up to the host, however.

Roleplay
Chess knowledge is not required to participate in this competition. You are free to roleplay about whatever you want, and do not have to mention the results at all.

Feel free to sign up below, bid to host, or ask any questions.

Signups (20):
1. South Newlandia
2. Srednjaci
3. Raspotochje (Puppet of Srednjaci)
4. TJUN-ia
5. Vilwandia
6. Eshialand
7. New Eestiball
8. Ralsalin
9. Græntfjall
10. The Kytler Peninsulae
11. Gatchingerrak Union
12. Kenosha
13. Mandhya Pradha
14. Sky Reavers
15. Natanians and Nosts
16. The Ice States
17. Vonum
18. Safiloa
19. Delaclava
20. New South Yukon (Puppet of New Eestiball)

Host Bids (1):
Zube, The Kytler Peninsulae

[Srednjaci]

We are back
Raspotochje also as our puppet

[Raspotochje]

Yeah, ok
Cheers

[TJUN-ia]

The Esportivan Jaguar Knights are ready to go again!

[Vilwandia]

Let's make our debut in this. Count us in.

[Eshialand]

Checkmate!

[New Eestiball]

Our 3rd appearance, but it's been awhile!

[Ralsalin]

Ralsalin is ready to send their only brain cell to this chess competition.

ICly, this nation is a puppet of Kanmer, but Kanmer would not participate, so Ralsalin is signing up independently.

[Graintfjall]

Get in loser, we're playing chess.

[The Kytler Peninsulae]

There will be a returning champion team at ECC8, and that team is somehow the Kytlerian one!

A Kytlerian host bid is coming, more details soon...

[New Eestiball]

What number of signups are we aiming for?

[The Kytler Peninsulae]

ELEPHANT CHESS CUP 8 HOST BID
Zube, The Kytler Peninsulae

Format information
The proposed format replaces the Casaran/Swiss opening phase with a pool phase, as previously used in ECC5 in Poafmersia. This is identical to the 2022 World Team Chess Championship format, although the pools may be larger and the IC scheduling is different due to the ECC's 15+5 time control rather than the semi-rapid 45+10 the WTCC used in 2022. (In keeping with past ECC scheduling, four games would be scheduled per IC day.)

The pool phase would consist of two evenly-sized pools (most likely of eight teams) playing each other once, with two players on white and two on black for each team. The top four teams from each pool would advance to the knockout stages, with their pool phase position representing their seeding in the single-elimination draw as follows:
QF1: 1st A vs 4th B
QF2: 2nd B vs 3rd A
QF3: 1st B vs 4th A
QF4: 2nd A vs 3rd B
SF1: Winner QF1 vs winner QF2
SF2: Winner QF3 vs winner QF4

In the knockout stages each contest comprises two games with teams switching colours for the second. In the event of two tied games or each team winning one (regardless of the score in each), the match would go to a blitz tiebreak (3+2 time control). In the quarter-final and semi-final, in the event of a 2-2 tie in the blitz, the higher seed would advance. In the final, additional blitz tiebreaks would be played until the tie is broken and a champion found over the board.

Assuming a 2x8 format, the scheduling (IC and OOC, the latter referring to the start of a one-hour cutoff window) would follow these lines. Note that the dates are not set in stone, the 1 January start date is mostly used for visual ease, and the later time for the final is tied to whichever Saturday was used in the scorination, not to the final:

IC TIME (IsT)  OOC TIME (UTC)  EVENTS
Thu 11:33                      Opening ceremony
Thu 14:00      1/1 20:00       Pool phase round 1
Thu 17:00      3/1 20:00       Pool phase round 2
Thu 19:00      3/1 20:00       Pool phase round 3
Fri 12:00      5/1 20:00       Pool phase round 4
Fri 14:00      5/1 20:00       Pool phase round 5
Fri 17:00      7/1 20:00       Pool phase round 6
Fri 19:00      7/1 20:00       Pool phase round 7
Sat 11:33      9/1 20:00       Quarter-final part 1
Sat 13:37      9/1 20:00       Quarter-final part 2, and blitz tiebreakers if necessary
Sat 17:00      11/1 20:00      Semi-final part 1
Sat 19:00      11/1 20:00      Semi-final part 2, and blitz tiebreakers if necessary
Sun 11:33      13/1 21:00      Final part 1
Sun 13:37      13/1 21:00      Final part 2, and blitz tiebreakers if necessary
Sun 17:00                      Closing ceremony

The OOC bid
The Kytler Peninsulae are a newly re-established nation with a long, mostly-distant sporting history that culminated in hosting the Games of the IX Olympiad (solo, at least officially; the tradition of dual-hosted Olympics began after this). Even that history was not the user's first rodeo; he'd previously been Kaze Progressa and Kura-Pelland, hosting World Cups plural (among other events) with both, and the former is the "KP" in "KPB," having been the lead creator of that ranking system before World Cup 12. Between his three nations, his long list of enduring NSS contributions include the Baptism of Fire, the use of style modifiers at the World Cup, the initial creation of the International Domestic Soccer Newswires thread, and the MMAB (Min-Max Avoidance Bonus) in the Olympics.

Elephant Chess Cup 7 marked his (shockingly successful) return to the international sporting scene after a prolonged absence, and now Elephant Chess Cup 8 has the potential to be an apt return to the hosting scene. Domestic league generation is being used to get back up to speed with xkoranate, which will be used for scorination of this competition with the SNL formula file in effect.

RP bonus - which, in an unranked competition like the ECC, is all that separates the competitors - will be weighted 25% towards the most recent RP day, 25% towards the best RP day, and 50% towards the overall average RP day, all on a 0-1 scale. This means the maximum RP bonus can be fixed at 1 and still be in full effect from the very start, providing an incentive towards pre-tournament RP and roster submission. (The pre-opening RP window will weight rosters and other RP 50-50, and a roster posted later is retroactively added to that day's value and hence the average and potentially best RP part of the bonus.) It also means you're not necessarily punished badly for missing one RP window if you've RPed well earlier in the competition, as you'll still have a clear advantage over those who didn't RP at all.

Grading is planned to skew generous, and all forms of RP are welcome, including those that do not assume chess knowledge. (Just ask any actual chess player on the server about how good at RL chess Kytler isn't...) Creativity and respect for user permissions, not length, will be the key to the top RP grades.

Pool phase rankings would be in the following order:
1. Game points (2 for a win, 1 for a draw)
2. Match points (cumulative match wins from all players)
3. Head-to-head result
4. Neustadtl Sonneborn-Berger score (sum of scores of defeated opponents + half the sum of scores of drawn opponents)
5. Coinflip

The blitz tiebreakers in the knockout stages would be scorinated as simple resims.

Any knockout matches involving the Kytlerian team would be scorinated by a third party.

The IC bid
The proposed venue is the Margaret Hotel and Conference Centre in Zube (ZOO-buh), the purpose-built Kytlerian capital. Known as "Snowflake City" for the aerial appearance given by its pale roofing and road surfaces, Zube is located at the northern end of the "Eastern Corridor" linking the country's two titular peninsulae. (Despite the name, the majority of Kytlerians live in the Eastern Corridor rather than the peninsulae.) With a population of around 800,000, it is the second largest in the country after Kytler Bay City, to which it is linked by a high-speed maglev line built for the Olympics (which the two cities co-hosted). Zube International Airport provides a wide variety of international connections, including flights to most Rushmori capitals. The venue is directly connected to University railway station, which is on the main route to the northern peninsula; the adjacent ZUR (Zube Underground Railway) station provides connections to Zube International Airport.

Run by the University of Zube and located on the edge of its main campus in the northwest of the city, the Margaret Hotel and Conference Centre is one Kytlerian venue that has an established history of welcoming foreign guests, as academia was unaffected by the Kytlerian international isolation in sport and the Conference Centre has staged all manner of academic conferences in various obscure fields. The University of Zube is also the de facto home of Kytlerian chess; the entire ECC7-winning team were either students or lecturers there, their skills honed in part by the annual interdepartmental tournament between the mathematics department (led by Professor John Roach, the leading Kytlerian player) and the Margaret Institute, home of research into sport and its culture.

The main hotel accommodation is built directly over University railway station, though extensive soundproofing prevents meaningful railway noise from entering the rooms; there are 327 rooms split evenly across the three floors, with modern facilities and a minimalist black-and-white design theme. The Conference Centre is attached to the hotel on the western side of the railway line (which runs roughly north-south at this point), while on the other side is the catering and sporting facilities of the hotel. A linking bridge between the two at the southern end of the complex provides direct access to the train station, and the hotel reception can be found here. The entire complex will be dedicated to ECC use for the week of the event - including the hotel restaurant and gym, which are usually open to the public - with access only available to those with an event pass. The Conference Centre's main hall - most often used as a 1,093-seat theatre, including for the popular Margaret Lecture Series - will play host to the competition proper, and each team will have exclusive access to one of its smaller rooms (the type usually used as meeting rooms or breakout spaces at conferences) as a private practice facility. In general the hotel is considered comparable to a premium chain airport hotel in terms of feel and services, reflecting its typically business-oriented clientele.

Minor edit after IC times for the semi-final were discovered to be mistakenly copied from the quarter-final in the process of fixing prior errors in the process of making the formatting work. If the bid is approved and there are 18 or 20 teams, as is currently likely, a new IC schedule will be created to reflect the need for nine rather than seven pool phase rounds. The OOC schedule will continue to be based on 2x48 scheduling throughout after round 1, counting the two-legged knockout rounds as two rounds (i.e. both legs of each knockout round are one scorination window).

[Gatchingerrak Union]

In. Hopefully I will be able to string together RPs, and where better to do than in Rushmore?

No problem with the bid - and I more than trust you as host, KP. Format fits well to the sport as well.

That said, I have a question:

Per the Guide to Sports Roleplaying, Tournaments using real-life teams or athletes (e.g. The UEFA Champions League, the US Open, Lionel Messi, The 2018 World Cup etc.) do not belong on NS Sport.

What will be your RP grading policy on content extensively using real-life teams or athletes? This differs from those inspired/influenced by them - Niemann's anal beads incident recreated by an original character would be bizarre (as we could say IRL) but funny - but this is a good question to ask.

[Graintfjall]

I've been a bit absent the last couple tournaments but I'm optimistic about RPing more this time. Previous ECCs I've established a tradition of doing a military-themed RP each time, and that's something I'd enjoy continuing, so if anyone wants to collab, get in touch.

KP: fine bid, just wondered what you in mind re: scheduling over the holidays.

[South Newlandia]

What number of signups are we aiming for?

We are not aiming for any specific number; we'll use the number of signups we get.

Signups updated (still open!), and (great) bid noted (also still open for more of those!)

[The Kytler Peninsulae]

The questions are appreciated!

The plan around holiday scheduling is essentially "swerve it," with a start date almost certainly in the first week of January and the Everything Thread to be posted a week before that start date. (The 1/1 start quoted for ease of reference in the bid should be considered an earliest possible date, with later ones possible. Regardless of the start date, there will be 2/48 windows, and the cutoff will be 2100 UTC on the one Saturday used - due to the timing of my online Civilization VI games - and 2000 UTC on the other scorination days.)

As for the question from Gatchingerrak Union, I certainly intend to heavily downgrade - if not entirely disregard - RP that's mostly using RL players, as opposed to being based on it (like riffing off the Niemann allegations, or indeed moves from classic games for those who RP from that angle). I agree entirely that there is a difference, something that - as you say - the Guide to Sports Roleplaying makes clear. (Though some RL repetition can become tropey itself - back in the Kaze Progressa days I remember regular copy-pastes of France-England at Euro 2004 in the months after it, something I'm pretty sure I was guilty of doing too. But I doubt that's as likely to be a thing in chess.)

As SNL said, there's no specific target number, although my format heavily invites an even number. (And the pure IC scheduling of my bid was created with 16 in mind, but that's mostly because it worked neatly...)

[Kenosha]

Kenosha will enter for the first time

[Gatchingerrak Union]

Thank you for your response. I am more than convinced.

[Mandhya Pradha]

Let's give it a try.

[Sky Reavers]

Third time is a charm... Let's go!

[Natanians and Nosts]

March can't come fast enough.
In.
By the looks of it,if my mind is not really bad,things will go smooth in here,calendary-wise.

[South Newlandia]

Signups updated. This is also a reminder that the deadline for host bids is less than a day and a half away. Signups are also still open!

[New Eestiball]

I'll put a numbers puppet in if we stay at 15, because 16 is a better number.

[The Ice States]

Signing up!

[South Newlandia]

The host bidding deadline has now passed, and I am about to send telegrams with voting instructions to those eligible to vote. Signups remain open!